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Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

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Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#51

Post by dgunay »

iamcoder18 wrote: post #11

This is cool, but has anyone ever needed to rewrite commit authors or dates?

Times I have needed to do this:

  - An agent messed with my git config for some reason so I had to go back and fix the commit authorship
  - I created a PR mostly based on work that someone else did, so I reauthored most of the commits to be in their name
I have never personally needed to touch dates.

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#53

Post by gritzko »

whateveracct wrote: post #41
danudey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I've used Claude to write a lot of smaller utility tools that I wouldn't normally have the time to sit down and implement, but which also solve straightforward problems. One small example is an extension for the `gh` cli where I give it a PR number and multiple branches and it cherry-picks that PR to those branches, or lets me know if some of the branches don't work. For managing multiple release…

but if you were sharing those utilities - even in a github gist! - why not write the English parts for human consumption yourself?

That is in fact the difficult part. You have to explain it all coherently while adjusting to the reader's frame. No one does that for no good reason. It is hellish work.

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#54

Post by gritzko »

whateveracct wrote: post #49
MattGaiser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tool like this never sees the light of day without an LLM. Git is complicated and use case for this is rather niche.

i definitely used to write bash functions for this sort of thing tho. no GUI, but it was useful to do stuff like obscure my working hours (make it look like i did personal stuff after-hours. make it seem like stuff took all day instead of an hour..like adding sawdust to meat). like you said, niche and probably unnecessary. and if i were to have published them (even in a gist!) i would have written the docs myself ins…

Yep, tell Claude to spit out a shell script. Use Python if bash is not enough.

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#55

Post by arscan »

whateveracct wrote: post #45
saghm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git has a notoriously overcomplicated interface, so this is a scenario that I can honestly understand why someone wouldn't want to do it by hand

but what about the writing English to describe it part? does English also have a notoriously overcomplicated interface lol

Well, yeah, it does.

Effective and clear communication is really important and often really hard for engineers. It is said that one goal of stackoverflow was to help programmers learn how to write through practice, as it’s both very hard and very critical to their effectiveness:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-write-without-writing/

But programmers are also lazy*, so why put in the effort to improve when you can just get llms to do the work for you?

* not necessarily in a bad way

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#56

Post by whateveracct »

voidfunc wrote: post #50
whateveracct wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why can't anyone just do things themselves anymore? it's all LLM crap

Because I have better things to do with my time.

I have better things to do than read LLM prose copy-pasted verbatim too.

And yet here we are. I have to read LLM design docs that turn into LLM PRs with LLM PR descriptions and comments and docs.

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#57

Post by whateveracct »

gritzko wrote: post #54
whateveracct wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i definitely used to write bash functions for this sort of thing tho. no GUI, but it was useful to do stuff like obscure my working hours (make it look like i did personal stuff after-hours. make it seem like stuff took all day instead of an hour..like adding sawdust to meat). like you said, niche and probably unnecessary. and if i were to have published them (even in a gist!) i would have written the docs myself ins…

Yep, tell Claude to spit out a shell script. Use Python if bash is not enough.

It wasn't hard to just..figure it out though. One sitting tops.

Claude is learned (taught? lol) helplessness, at scale. I'm pretty sure it's their real moat.

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#58

Post by gritzko »

whateveracct wrote: post #57
gritzko wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, tell Claude to spit out a shell script. Use Python if bash is not enough.

It wasn't hard to just..figure it out though. One sitting tops. Claude is learned (taught? lol) helplessness, at scale. I'm pretty sure it's their real moat.

If you dont use that regularly, why keep the app?

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#59

Post by jauntywundrkind »

Two recent threads where I sing some praises of git rebase -i, specifically linking it to a spreadsheet. Awesome to see this pop up, feels serendipitous!

Git rebase -i is not that scary 119 points, 16 days ago, 151 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49053385 https://cachebag.sh/journal/interactive-rebasing/

Staging patches with git add 34 points, 12 days ago, 52 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49048570 https://cachebag.sh/journal/interactive-rebasing/

Really enjoying jj these days but the git rebase -i spreadsheet remains such a winner. Expanding it more, leaning in, ftw.

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#60

Post by qurren »

whateveracct wrote: post #36
NichoPaolucci wrote: post #26

“It never reimplements git — it shells out to the system git CLI and rebuilds commits with git commit-tree, reusing each commit's original tree so file contents are provably never changed.” Glad the LLM noted this - I was worried this would reimplement git

why can't anyone just do things themselves anymore? it's all LLM crap

They can, just in today's world, they just are not deemed impressive enough by the voting public to make it to the front page.
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